


The Most Dangerous Thing is to Love

by vanilla_extract



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, As are the rest of the nein, But With Angst, Caduceus would be proud of me for my excessive plant metaphors, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Jester and Caleb are really just mentioned, Lonely Essek Thelyss, POV Essek Thelyss, takes place during episode 99 when Essek teleports back to Rosohna for the night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:48:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23497783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanilla_extract/pseuds/vanilla_extract
Summary: Essek returns to his empty tower on the first night of the peace talks and ponders love, friendship, trust, and a garden
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 8
Kudos: 81





	The Most Dangerous Thing is to Love

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to OMGitsgreen for helping me read through this, and thank you to the rest of the Essek Fanclub discord server for just generally being encouraging always.
> 
> Comments are really appreciated! I don't do this kind of thing often, but I would like to start to do so more.

Essek was just a little bit in love with all of his friends, he thought to himself that night as he apparated into his tower’s empty foyer. It was an unexpected aspect of becoming friends with so many people- the sheer emotional toll that it took. He hadn't realized, had never considered, that when one gets to know someone else- really know them, as he had just begun to do on that warm and wine-colored night at the Xhorhaus- one’s heart ties itself to the other’s. Whether the heart’s fastidious owner wants it to or not.  


His hands reached to take off his mantle, but he paused and then tucked them back beneath the folds of the fabric. The version of him that does not wear it is the version of him that he allowed the Mighty Nein to see, and he did not think he could bear to be that self after the looks of distrust he had seen on their faces today.  


Essek was a little bit in love with all of his friends, and it made everything, all of it, hurt so much more. It was platonic- for the most part- but love in any form was not something he had experienced before, in his century and then some of life. He had felt passion, of course. He was made of passion; the passion for knowledge, for understanding; it had always been all-consuming. It was a passion that transmuted itself forcibly into ambition and came burning out of him, pouring through his hands in the form of magic. And so what if it had to burn other people in the process? He had had passion, yes, but not love. Love was too tender a thing for Essek, like a small animal that would be easily crushed, and that his brain, unhelpfully, found cute enough to squeeze.  


Essek had received love, or at least affection before. He had been the breaker of hearts many times over, but, looking back on it, all that had amounted to was praise; words that came full out of the mouths of their speakers but fell empty on his ears. His past admirers had told him nothing he did not already know and had only served to feed his ego. All in all, it was nothing like the agonizing care and understanding he saw when he looked into Caleb’s eyes.  


Love was new to him, so how was he supposed to behave when he found love curling in his throat like grapevines? As he glided up his tower stairs and floated a bottle of wine to his hand, he thought back to that night where he had come to dinner- all nervous energy and earnestness. He had rehearsed the process of lowering his feet to the floor and removing his mantle before them and taken deep breaths before doing so. Endlessly questioning whether he really should, knowing that when the simple act was finished, he would become a different person in their eyes.  


He was already fond of them, in spite of himself, before that night. He had let his face, too smooth from a century without laughter, break into a smile at the sound of the tiefling girl’s voice in his head. He had found butterflies in his stomach and blush on his skin in the presence of the handsome human wizard. He had been fond, yes- been excruciatingly fond in a way that introduced him to guilt like it was a new nemesis- but he had not yet fallen in love.  


Love finds its roots in vulnerability, Essek realized as he drifted onto his tower’s walkways in the clean night air. Beneath the walkway, his small, private garden twisted its vines up toward the lightless sky. He had never felt smaller than he had when curled in the living room of the Xhorhaus- never felt smaller, and never felt warmer. Love finds its roots in vulnerability, which may be why, when Caleb had sought him out months ago to ask after the Scourger woman, Essek had felt something deep in his chest begin to split open. Caleb had looked so defenseless there with his shuffling awkwardness and smiles, and a deep, deep sadness that Essek could only begin to understand in his eyes. But Essek did begin to understand. It was that evening that Caleb planted regret in Essek’s heart like a seed.  


A short couple of months later, Essek had knocked on their door, a bottle of wine in hand, and that seed had sprouted and climbed like a weed, wrapped together with his growing love for them until the two emotions became so intertwined they may as well have been one and the same. What was love worth to him, if it came with this much pain?  


When he was a few glasses deep into the wine that he had brought, and a few hours deep into listening to more heartfelt conversation than he had ever been allowed to hear in his life, Caleb had asked him, leaning his elbows onto his knees, his hair falling loose from its tie, “Why trust us?”  


_I am lying to you._ Essek did not say. _I do_ not _trust you, because I do not know how. I do not know how!_  


“Because I am thankful to have met you,” he said instead, and that much was true.  


Now, he stood on the walkway between his tallest tower and his shortest overlooking the Rohsona night. In the distance, the buzz of nightlife thrummed across the cobblestones, rising and falling with verses and refrains. In his garden below, the tiny frogs that lived on the bark of the trees were chirruping out their tune in harmony with the gentle wind. The city was awash in the light of the green lanterns, and above him, the stars twinkled bright and cold.  


He used to think that those stars were evidence that the universe was vast and uncaring, and it had thrilled him endlessly. To look into the sky was like looking into the depths of the Beacons; so much was yet to be found; so much was left to be explored. The darkness stretched farther than the eye could see, no, further than the mind could even think into the infinite and bright void. It was wonderful and awe-inspiring, but it was cold.  


Now, though, Essek knew that there were parts of the universe that were small and warm. He remembered the tears that pricked at his eyes as he had laughed at Beauregard and Veth’s strange antics. He remembered the warmth that shot through his veins, danced across his skin, and settled in his fingertips when Caleb had pressed his lips to Essek’s brow.  


The night smelled faintly of Xhorhassian jasmine- a lightless flower that bloomed in tiny white stars- and the air was cool against his skin. The frogs continued their lilting lullaby, and Essek caught the pale gray flashes of wings as moths flitted past the lamplight. Somehow, this new universe that was small and warm was so much more tangled and confusing than the one that did not care about him.  


What was love worth to him, if it came with so much pain, he thought once more? He had only just begun to feel as though it was all… real, when everything had broken around him.  


It was his fault, of course. He had done disgusting things, and his friendships were built on unsteady foundations to begin with, but that did not make it hurt any less. The Mighty Nein made him feel grounded in a strange way. Maybe it was because they made him feel that there was a version of himself that really existed- one not obscured by folds of fabric and magic tricks.  


When he let out a breath, it dissipated in a cloud into the cold night air. A raindrop hit the cobblestones below, and then another. A steady pitter-patter of drizzle began to build until it became a soft white noise that filled the clear atmosphere. The droplets clung to the petals of the jasmine and traced their graceful curve before falling gently to the grass. Essek absent-mindedly waved his hand, and the raindrops began to part around his mantled form, keeping him dry.  


Love was always the object of both joy and sorrow, he thought. He was new to it, as a concept, but that much was easy to glean. He had felt perfectly content for so long (so so long). He had kept to himself, within himself. Everything he did was for himself; everything he did was logical and simple enough to be unspooled and understood in its entirety. He could get by. He could do horrible, terrible things, and not even blink. His problems, he had thought, would always have solutions, if he had the mind to find them. His entire world had been contained inside his own body, kept safe by a cloak and feet that never needed to touch the ground.  


Now, however, there was a piece of his soul inside of each and every one of the Mighty Nein. It was painful, Luxon, _how did people manage this?_ The moment he laid eyes on the group, his life had become infinitely more complicated. Was it worth it, really? Would his net happiness not have remained the same had he stayed at home that damned night with his damned plum wine? Because yes, he had felt joy. Yes, he had felt a kinship. But was it worth the pain, the longing, and worst of all, the goddamn shame?  


He could feel himself simmering with resentment now as he stood in the incessant rain, but at who, he could not be sure. At himself, maybe? At his friends, at all the people he has hurt, at the Bright Queen and her religion, and the Cerberus Assembly… no, the first one on that list was probably the safest, he thought. If there is anything he had learned from this… experiment, it was that he should keep things within himself. He leaned his elbows on the railing of his walkway and looked down at his rain-drenched flowers. He should have just kept to himself.


End file.
